At once a compendious expropriation of enormous diversity and a brisk narrative, this work seeks to "minimally circumscribe" a pivotal figure in Western thought, Saint Augustine. In an effort to satisfy the law of non-contradiction and thereby preserve Gods omnipotence and justice - two terms in a configuration of three - Augustine boldly confronted the third, evil. Resorting to what were, by judicial norms, even then obsolescent notions of pollution he instead confounded God with an all the more inscrutable evil, thereby consigning Western civilization to a long blind alley from which it has...